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There is an increasing interest in the notion of peer learning in higher education. In the literature peer learning is mainly presented as a pedagogical tool used by institutions and teachers to promote curriculum learning, but also to include a variety of competences related to becoming a professional. This paper is based upon observations of peer learning that particularly expand beyond curriculum learning. Students create niches for peer interaction and learning where meaning-making of the educational situation and their position within it is included. There is a type of learning in higher education that can be called peer-mediated peer learning that has different characteristics than the notion of peer learning that dominates in the literature. In these peer-mediated niches students learn to become students, and they are free to agree or disagree with the course content in a way that they cannot express for instance in their assignments and exam papers. The paper discusses peer learning in the perspective of activity theory and the notion of zone of proximal development (ZPD) and finds that the standard understanding of ZPD does not explain peer-mediated peer learning.