Peers as Bridges to Belonging: Fostering Community Through Near-Peer Mentorship in Large-Enrollment Courses

Large-enrollment courses are a defining feature of undergraduate education worldwide, yet they pose well-documented psychological challenges for both students and instructors. Anonymity, limited instructor interaction, and competitive classroom climates can erode students' sense of belonging, which has consistently been linked to academic motivation, persistence, and achievement. These threats are magnified for students from historically underrepresented backgrounds, including first-generation college students, racial and ethnic minorities, and students navigating identity-based stereotype threats. In response, institutions have increasingly turned to peer-led instructional models—undergraduate teaching assistants, learning assistants, supplemental instruction leaders, and peer mentors—as a strategy for humanizing large courses and creating more supportive learning environments.Despite the rapid expansion of near-peer teaching programs across disciplines, the psychological mechanisms through which near-peer instructors influence student experiences remain under-researched. Most existing research is concentrated in STEM fields and focuses on performance outcomes rather than the social and motivational processes that drive them. Meanwhile, the belonging literature has largely examined brief psychological interventions without attending to the structural and instructional design features of courses that sustain or undermine belonging over time. This Research Topic seeks to bridge these two literatures by inviting empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions that examine (a) how large-course environments shape students’ psychological experiences, (b) the role of near-peer instructors in fostering belonging, motivation, and engagement, (c) how peer instructor training and mentorship programs influence the development of the peer instructors themselves, (d) how near-peer instructors help faculty navigate the pedagogical and logistical demands of teaching at scale, and (e) how these processes vary across student populations, disciplines, and institutional contexts. By uniting scholars from educational psychology, social psychology, and discipline-based education research, this collection aims to build an integrated framework for understanding how community is created and sustained in the courses where students are most at risk of feeling invisible.Areas of interest include, but are not limited to the following:•Psychological mechanisms linking near-peer teaching to student belonging, motivation, and academic outcomes in large courses•The role of near-peer instructors in reducing identity threat and fostering inclusive classroom climates •The effects of training models for undergraduate teaching assistants and learning assistants on pedagogical knowledge, self-efficacy, and professional identity development •Assessment fairness, feedback quality, and student trust when peer instructors are involved in grading •How near-peer instructors support faculty in identifying and responding to instructional challenges unique to large-enrollment contexts, including monitoring student engagement, providing formative feedback, and facilitating active learning at scale •Comparative studies across disciplines, institution types, or cultural contexts •Equity-focused analyses examining differential impacts on first-generation, racially minoritized, or other under-served student populationsThis Research Topic welcomes Original Research, Reviews, Mini Reviews, Perspectives, and Methods articles. Topic editors: Jenel T. Cavazos, Alison Melley, Erin Hardin Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78651/peers-as-bridges-to-belonging-fostering-community-through-near-peer-mentorship-in-large-enrollment-courses