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This dissertation focuses on three manuscripts all related to bolstering science achievement through recommendations from the National Research Council (NRC) regarding the teaching and learning of science. The manuscripts address meeting the NRC's call to incorporate curriculum and assessment that lead to more in-depth knowledge that can be transferred across domains, and the use of technology to facilitate teaching and learning. The first manuscript, "Improving Science Achievement -- Is It Possible? Evaluating the Efficacy of a High School Chemistry and Physics Project-Based Learning Intervention," describes the process of developing intensive project-based curriculum and assessment materials for high school chemistry and physics classrooms. This study answers the question of what impact that curriculum has on students' future science achievement and academic ambition. The second manuscript, "Using Machine Learning to Score Multi-Dimensional Assessments of Chemistry and Physics," focuses on the use of a supervised machine learning approach to facilitate the scoring of science assessments. The goal of this study was to determine whether automating the process of classifying these responses could reduce the burden placed on teachers in scoring assessments that effectively measure the dimensions of learning spelled out by the NRC. The third study, "U.S. and Finnish high school engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic," then explores student engagement with the use of technologies that facilitate remote instruction. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Physicists, physics students, and community members engage with each other through a variety of informal physics programs. These programs differ in format, such as after school programs, public lectures, planetariums, summer camps, and other non-formal classroom environments. These programs also differ in the physics topics they cover, activities, audience demographics, frequency of events, and involved personnel. While studies have found that these programs have positive impacts on audiences and volunteers, we do not fully understand the organizational and programmatic structures of these programs or their impacts on those involved with these programs. In this work, I apply an organizational theory framework to understand and analyze six functional aspects of informal physics programming: "Assessment, Audience, Institution, Personnel, Program," and "Resources." One finding is that the personnel have a central role in the functionality of these programs, however, program leaders often experience challenges because most of the responsibilities are placed on a single person. Program leaders state they want to do more assessment of their programs, but lack the time, resources, or experience to do so. Building off of my findings, I developed an empirical framework of key components. This framework identifies 12 key components of informal physics programming that program leaders have control over and that are important to the program's functionality. Identifying these components lays the groundwork for developing tools and resources that program leaders can use to support and improve their programs. Multiple of these components are centered around the recruitment and support of volunteers. Since these are voluntary positions, understanding the motivations of volunteers can help program leaders to better support their personnel. I interviewed alumni who had volunteered in informal physics programs as university students. I applied a volunteerism framework to understand their motivations for volunteering in the first place and the impacts that volunteering had on their career pursuits. The findings of these studies help to identify the aspects of informal physics programs that are crucial for program functionality and how some of these aspects impact those who facilitate these learning spaces. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

One way to bring about change in higher education is to introduce professional development programs for higher education, however these programs have been found to be ineffective at promoting positive change for individuals and departments. To address the need for better programs, I worked on two projects: one project attempts to identify a way to improve Responsible Conduct of Research training and the other project is an assessment designed to be distributed in a Thermal and Statistical Physics course that supports instructors on improving their curriculum. Many scientists view science as value-free, despite the fact that both epistemic and non-epistemic values structure scientific inquiry. Current Responsible Conduct of Research training usually focuses on transmitting knowledge about high-level ethical concepts or rules and is widely regarded as ineffective. We argue that Responsible Conduct of Research training will be more effective at improving ethical decision making if it focuses on connecting values to science. Due to the investigation of research ethics education in physics being relatively new, we pull from philosophy and psychology to define ethical decision making using the Four Component Model. This model states that in order to make an ethical decision someone must consider four components: moral sensitivity, moral reasoning, moral motivation, and moral implementation. For this study we formed a moderated fellowship of fourteen science faculty from different disciplines who met for ten sessions over the course of a year, where they discussed the values embedded in different scientific norms. We then conducted interviews before and after the year-long fellowship that involved guided reflection of scenarios where there was some kind of ethical misconduct where the scientific practice required value judgements (e.g using unpublished data). From this data we looked at how the fellowship affected the scientists' ability to recognize ethical dimensions in their work. We found that this fellowship improves moral sensitivity, but their moral reasoning does not change. We then identified a more precise approach to looking at scientists' moral reasoning. This work can inform future ethical training to align better with what scientists value and introduce useful concepts from philosophy and psychology to education research in physics.There are calls to create assessments that focus on gathering evidence that shows both knowledge of the desired subject and transferable skills between disciplines while providing useful feedback to instructors. To answer this call, we created a thermal and statistical physics assessment that provides evidence of student knowledge and skills in a thermal or statistical physics course that also provides actionable feedback to instructors. To create tasks, we use a knowledge-in-use framework that focuses on identifying the evidence we need to see in student answers to claim students are able to do physics, not just know physics. These "evidence statements" are the observable features students generate that show they have knowledge to complete a claim. We need to determine a way to validate the tasks based on the focus towards obtaining evidence of student abilities when solving tasks. Current literature focuses on bringing in experts to validate whether the tasks are at the right level for the students. We are looking to expand on literature in Physics Education Research (PER) by articulating a way to validate tasks that use evidence-centered design through looking at students' evidence statements. To validate the assessment, we identified new components to gather evidence towards validation. Using these new components we introduced a new methodology to validate assessments that focus on delivering feedback through evidence. We have conducted and analyzed student think-aloud interviews answering the tasks in a free-response format or in a Coupled Multiple-Response format. We also conducted faculty interviews to see if the tasks are relevant to their courses. Through these interviews we developed a new methodology of contributing to the validation of assessments that focus on faculty feedback. This dissertation introduces new methodologies for future researchers to improve on Responsible Conduct of Research trainings and assessment designed for supporting instructor curriculum. Through these new methodologies scientists can address the calls for better professional development programs in higher education. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Understanding human behavior and reasoning is essential for developing successful instruction. Discipline-based education researchers have examined how students learn, informing the development of successful instructional strategies. Researchers have also identified barriers to the successful implementation of such strategies. This work utilizes two theoretical frameworks from psychology to further examine: 1) efforts to enact instructional change and 2) the effectiveness of instructional approaches to improve students' reasoning in physics. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is used to assess professional development supporting the successful implementation of evidence-based instructional strategies. The Dual Process Theories of Reasoning and Decision-making (DPToR) are used to model human reasoning and explain persistent inconsistencies in student responses. Guided by the TPB, an assessment instrument was created, validated, and implemented to evaluate instructor's beliefs and intentions about active-learning methodologies. A semi-novel research methodology was also applied to address response-shift bias, a phenomenon common in professional development self-reported assessments. The validation of the instrument and the utility of the retrospective pretest methodology are reported, together with initial assessment results, demonstrating the value of both the TPB and the retrospective pretest in the context of professional development. The second half of this work discusses inconsistent student reasoning, where students correctly apply conceptual understanding in one context but fail to do so in similar situations. This phenomenon is examined using the Dual Process Theories of Reasoning, which describes reasoning in terms of two processes: a fast, automatic process 1 and a slow, resource-intensive process 2. Process 1 is quick but frequently inaccurate. Process 2 is analytical but time-consuming and effortful. Four reasoning hazards are identified and examined through the lens of DPToR. Three different types of interventions are implemented to help students develop skills to navigate reasoning hazards: 1) Collaborative exams are used to trigger socially-mediated-metacognition in a high-stakes environment, modeling process 2 activation through group reasoning, 2) a multi-stage guided individual intervention followed by a classroom discussion, and 3) explicit discussion of human reasoning modeled by DPToR. The impacts of these interventions are assessed by comparing results from the treatment (intervention) and controlled (alternative intervention) groups. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Challenges to integrating technology into educational institutions pose a significant issue that impacts students' performance and accomplishments. The research problem addressed through this study was that secondary school physics teachers were challenged to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) in a southwestern state of Nigeria. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore secondary physics teacher perceptions of the factors that challenged ICT integration in the southwestern state of Nigeria, so that schools could be provided with research-deduced recommendations to take informed steps forward toward developing technology-integrated student-centered pedagogies. In this study, the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology served as the conceptual framework. Research questions were rooted in the conceptual framework consisting of four percepts: effort expectancy, performance expectancy, social influences, and facilitating conditions, all of which collectively influence teachers' adoption of technology in classroom teaching. The subjective sample was comprised of 12 participants who were secondary school physics teachers employed in a single school district. With a basic qualitative approach, data were gathered using an open-ended interview protocol. Subsequently, a thematic analysis of the collected data was conducted, focusing on each of the three research questions. The results of this study indicated how teachers' experiences and perceptions informed techniques to be adopted for effective ICT integration in physics education, in the target state. The outcomes of the study coupled with the planned professional development session for secondary school physics teachers in technology integration might result in positive change from more teachers integrating technology with efficacy and fidelity. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The under-representation of women in undergraduate science courses is well-documented. One significant challenge is that women may both perceive and receive less recognition from their science peers about their abilities as scientists than men. Here we investigate the presence and nature of such gender biases in peer recognition in the discipline of physics specifically. First, we examine the extent to which three different instructional physics contexts exhibit a gender bias in received peer recognition by asking students to list their strong physics peers on a survey. We find that there is a gender bias (in which students disproportionately recognize men as strong in their physics course more than women) in physics courses aimed at first-year, but not beyond first-year, students. We then analyze possible mechanisms underlying this gender bias. Asking students to both nominate their strong physics peers and explain their reasons for these nominations, we find an effect of gender on what skills students are recognized for in lab, but not lecture, physics courses. In both kinds of courses, we find a strong association between peer interactions and peer recognition: of the peers with whom students interact, students disproportionately select peers of their same gender to nominate as a strong student. In the third chapter, we investigate received peer recognition over a two-semester introductory physics course sequence at a mostly-women institution. We observe that while general patterns of recognition are stable over time for the same cohort of students, the most highly nominated students are subject to fluctuations that are closely tied to changes in student outspokenness. Finally, we directly compare students' received recognition (the number of nominations they receive from peers as strong in their physics course) and perceived recognition (the extent to which they feel recognized by their peers as a physics person) across student gender. We find that for men and women receiving the same amount of peer recognition (and having the same race or ethnicity, academic year, and academic major), men report significantly higher perceptions of their recognition than women. Together, these four studies provide a strong foundation for our understanding of who and what gets recognized in physics peer recognition, with a focus on the role of gender in such recognition. This body of research lays the groundwork for future studies that design, implement, and evaluate instructional activities aimed at mitigating gender differences in peer recognition. Such interventions have the potential to retain more women and other marginalized groups in physics. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Women, especially Black and Latina women, are marginalized in physics, including in high school classrooms. Recognition is one of the ways women and girls experience marginalization in physics. This dissertation is comprised of three distinct but related studies examining how students experience recognition in an AP Physics 1 classroom. The first study is a mixed-methods study examining students' sense of self-efficacy using a sequential explanatory design. This study first examined the relationship between students' self-assessments and actual quiz scores and found no statistically significant difference between boys and girls in this class. I next used open-ended self-assessment prompts and semi-structured student interviews to identity classroom experiences that students felt contributed to or detracted from their sense of self-efficacy. While boys and girls talked about many experiences, such as the way labs in the course were structured, in very similar ways, only boys clearly discussed receiving consistent recognition from their peers, leading to the research questions in the subsequent studies. The second study examined how students provided each other with recognition, what kinds of contributions they recognized, and how peer recognition interacted with students' sense of physics identity using small group video and student interviews. Recognition fell into two major categories: explicit, where students directly recognized a peer, and implicit, where the recognition was provided indirectly. Explicit recognition was primarily connected to correct answers while implicit recognition was connected to a much broader range of contributions. During interviews, when students discussed their personal physics identity, they primarily discussed correct answers and explicit recognition they had received, suggesting that their personal identity was primarily connected to explicit recognition. When discussing their conceptions of what it means to hold a physics identity, students referenced not only correct answers, but the much broader range of contributions connected to implicit recognition. They also described giving both explicit and implicit recognition. This suggests that students connected both categories of recognition to their conceptions of a physics identity. Third, I analyzed exchanges in which students positioned each other in terms of physics ability without directly referencing physics using video of a mixed-gender group and an all-boy group. The mixed-gender group engaged in many of these exchanges and primarily used them when the girl contributed a correct answer with the boys taking authoritative positions. Rather than providing the girl with recognition, these exchanges served to devalue her contribution. The all-boy group, by contrast, only had one of these exchanges and neither was clearly established as more authoritative. Together, these studies provide insights into the gendered dynamics of the recognition that students give and receive in physics classrooms with implications for instructional practice. There is a clear need for teachers to structure group work in ways that ensure all students are recognized by their peers for a wide range of contributions and to disrupt gendered patterns in the classroom. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Concept inventories are widely used in physics education research, yet numerous studies show that concept inventories measure dramatically different learning gains in different demographic groups. Prior studies show that the performance gaps between demographic groups are already present in their preinstruction responses, suggesting that the observed gaps are largely due to students' prior experiences. For college students, these "prior experiences" are often attributed to their high school physics education (or lack thereof). If this is true, then one would expect the performance gaps on the pre-instruction responses to disappear if we control for the highest level of high school physics (e.g., AP/IB, honors, non-honors, or no prior physics whatsoever) taken by students. I investigated this hypothesis by looking at the responses of 1410 college students to the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) at the beginning of their first semester of an introductory college physics class. All 1410 students went to high school in North Carolina before taking their college physics class at a public college or university in North Carolina. I found that performance gaps exist between men and women, even when controlling for prior high school physics course. To further understand the factors that influence this phenomenon, I investigated the role played by a myriad of socio-economic variables in explaining variance in FCI performance of participants who attended public or charter high schools in North Carolina (n = 1168), an investigation lacking in the prior research. I found that many such variables hold statistically significant explanatory power, though few have large explanatory power. Finally, I investigated specific topics on the FCI in order to determine if the trends observed on the overall FCI hold for each topic. I found that, for participants with no prior physics coursework, there was no gap between men and women on questions pertaining to the topic of superposition. Coupled with the fact that the performance gap exists for all other topics and prior coursework subgroups, this finding suggests that certain socio-cultural factors may influence the gender performance gap for both students in formal physics classrooms and individuals who do not take physics courses. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Neurodiversity is the celebration of the diversity of minds. It is the understanding that people think, sense, and behave in different ways, and the assertion that the non-normative ways which people and their minds operate are, in fact, good. Neurodivergent people are beginning to access higher education at much higher rates than ever before. Yet, disability studies scholars note that, once inside, success in navigating academia remains inaccessible for many neurodivergent students. On the other hand, neurodivergent students oftentimes report qualities which otherwise make them successful STEM professionals, such as different ways of solving problems, different spatial reasoning, or different methods of working. In this dissertation, I present a tool for investigating the identity formation of neurodivergent physics students, the Critical Disability Physics Identity (CDPI) framework, which takes a strengths-based approach to understanding identity through resource use and political agency. I operationalize this CDPI framework and use it to investigate and hold space for the experiences of neurodivergent postbaccalaureate nonacademic physicists, physics undergraduates, and physics graduate students. I conclude with a call to action for disability justice in physics. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The post-pandemic classroom dealt with not only the mental health struggles of educators and students, but also the technological and virtual learning dependence in a time ridden with misinformation. At this time, it was important to not only consider the purpose and intent of science education as a learning experience, but also pedagogical approaches that seek to actualize this very intent. The pedagogy of science has at its foundation the experience of inquiry-beginning from self and expanding to the natural world. Explained by educationalists like John Dewey and Thomas Kuhn and in theory, implemented into classrooms through the Next Generation Science Standards, the potential of inquiry is to expand from a first-person experience to the wellbeing of community and society. Moreover, contemplative philosophies, such as Yoga, Vedanta, and Buddhist mindfulness, provide novel, yet ancient approaches to teaching this awareness through their pedagogical framework. Contemplative or spiritual pedagogies are those whose approach involves the exploration of subjectivity through introspection and empathy practices like meditation, journaling, and activism. In all, as the practitioner of these traditions and the educator-researcher in the classroom, I performed a qualitative study in phenomenology. I taught an AP Physics C class influenced by the lens of this contemplative paradigm, although this was not detached from the usual curriculum or interventional by nature. From emergent themes in the past student work and evaluation of their experience, I discovered the following: when an educator applied the approach of these wisdom traditions into the classroom curriculum, the resulting environment impacted a positive learning experience as it pertained to engaging science as inquiry. This study had an ambition to provide a novel approach to teaching and learning inquiry informed by the above-mentioned traditions. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Physics education research to date has predominantly focused on the undergraduate level. This has left critical avenues of research in graduate education relatively understudied and has motivated much of my research. Numerous studies across the education research landscape have analyzed undergraduate admissions practices, but few have critically examined physics graduate admissions to the same extent. Additionally, significant research has focused on identifying characteristics indicative of productive PhD mentoring relationships, yet no study in physics has investigated how graduate students go about finding their advisor and research group in the first place. Lastly, despite ample research on problem-solving in undergraduate physics classes, little work has examined the expert-like problem-solving skills typically used by graduate students during research. My work addresses these gaps in the literature. First, I present results from a quantitative study of admissions data from 1,955 physics graduate students to illustrate how undergraduate grades predict graduate grades and PhD completion more effectively than GRE scores. Counterfactual mediation analysis is used to show that undergraduate grades predict PhD completion indirectly through graduate grades. I then present a qualitative study investigating 40 first and second-year physics PhD students' perspectives on the experience of finding a research group. Results from this study indicate that helping students successfully navigate the group search process may positively impact retention through increased sense of belonging in their programs. However, students often perceive a lack of guidance from their department regarding how to navigate that process. I also discuss the role that research interests play in the group search, including their effects on when students join a group and the concerns they have during the process. The final study details results from interviews with 11 theoretical physicists that give insight into how making assumptions and using analogies are used in their professional research. I discuss connections between the ways theorists use assumption and analogy and offer potential new avenues of research regarding applications to instruction at the undergraduate and graduate levels. I conclude by synthesizing the results of these studies and their implications for making PhD programs more inclusive, supportive, and productive for all students. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Our nation has declining participation in science and technology fields, even though in the United States we have seen an astounding collection of innovations in technology, communication, the Internet, and financial products. This lack of participation is even more noticeable for students with learning disabilities (SWLD) when compared to general education students (GES) at both the secondary and postsecondary levels as their enrollments in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) programs are noticeably disproportionate. Many interventions have been conducted to impact enrollment in more advanced science classes for SWLD, but challenges continue for this underrepresented group in STEM classrooms. This study assessed how the introduction of co-teaching (reciprocal teaching) with a special educator in STEM classrooms impacted a science teacher's self-efficacy while teaching SWLD in freshman Journey through Physical Science-physics classes. Reciprocal teaching is a collaborative co-teaching model that allows teachers and students to lead discussions while summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting on specific STEM content. The ultimate goal of this study was to potentially impact science teacher's self-efficacy and in turn, afford SWLD with greater access to learning science. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Physics education researchers have called for a shift from traditional laboratory (lab) instruction to labs that focus on the development of experimental skills. Although research has demonstrated the efficacy of such reformed labs, much work remains to determine what these labs can and should teach students and how best to achieve these goals. This thesis presents research on two such aspects of lab instruction: student reasoning about measurement and uncertainty and how group work roles impact women's and men's experiences in lab courses. The first part of this thesis describes our research on student reasoning about uncertainty. Previous research has primarily focused on introductory (intro) students' procedural reasoning in a simple, classical experiment. We expanded on this prior work by studying ideas about uncertainty across types of reasoning, student academic levels, and question contexts. We developed a survey to probe students' procedural reasoning (given some data, what should the student do?), predictive reasoning (given some different data, what will happen?), and reasoning about sources of uncertainty. We observed that upper-level students discussed different sources of uncertainty when asked about classical and quantum mechanics in a decontextualized question (principles of theoretical physics in quantum and limitations of an experiment in classical) but focused primarily on limitations when asked about specific classical and quantum experiments. We also observed that intro and beyond-intro students answered similarly on some types of questions, such as in comparing two data sets with the same mean but different spreads or in identifying how a data distribution would change if more data were collected, but differently on other types of questions, such as in determining whether two data sets agree or in identifying how a data distribution would change if better data were collected. Collectively, these results illustrate that student reasoning about uncertainty is context-dependent and varies across the physics curriculum. Our work motivates future research to identify how different instructional approaches affect student reasoning about uncertainty. The second part of this thesis addresses how the roles that students take on in group work in lab courses affect their course outcomes, particularly for women. Previous work has shown that men and women tend to take on different roles in lab courses, which may lead to inequity in the learning environment. In our research, we first interviewed five women who had taken a project-based lab course to understand the experiences of women who take on manager or leader roles in labs. We used a practice-linked identity framework to understand how the manager and leader roles affected women's opportunities for engagement and identity development and found that these roles could have positive, neutral, or negative influences on women who took them on. We additionally used linear regression to model quantitatively the relationship between roles and course outcomes for both men and women. We found no relationship between taking on an equipment-handling, note-taking, data analysis, or manager role and students' lab self-efficacy, lab critical thinking, or final course grade. Taken together, these results motivate future research to more precisely probe the relationship between course outcomes and roles and other group work structures. These results also suggest that future group work instructional interventions should consider individual students' needs as well as strategies that will benefit the class as a whole. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation brings together two research strands that study: (a) the ways in which physics and STEM students contribute to growing capacity for institutional change within collaborative teams and (b) the support structures of graduate programs through an innovative methodology grounded in network science. The first research strand is explored within two different team environments, one of a student-centric interinstitutional team and a second of departmental change teams. Across both of these contexts, I identify how by engaging in an interaction-based agency, students are able to jointly define their own roles and the projects they pursue. In comparing across these contexts, we identify how students navigate different leadership structures and how this can support or limit student contributions in these teams. A central contribution of this work is a model for cultivating capacity for change through shared leadership and relational agency. This model captures how capacity can be built in different domains tied to the activity systems of the work. We show how this model can help practitioners and facilitators better partner with students as well as how researchers can use this model to capture how students contribute to the work of the team. The second research strand focuses on developing and applying an innovative methodology for network analysis of Likert-style surveys. This methodology generates a meaningful network based on survey item response similarity. I show how researchers can use modular analysis of the network to identify larger themes built from the connections of particular aspects. Additionally, I apply this methodology to provide a unique interpretation of responses to the Aspects of Student Experience Scale instrument for well-defined demographic groups to show how thematic clusters identified in the full data set re-emerge or change for different groups of respondents. These results are important for practitioners who seek to make targeted changes to their physics graduate programs in hopes of seeing particular benefits for particular groups. This dissertation opens up lines for future work within both strands. The model for building capacity for change draws attention to the mediating processes that emerge on a team and in students' interactions with others. This model can be developed further to include additional constructs and leadership structures, as well as explore the relevance to other academic contexts. For quantitative researchers, the network analysis for Likert-style surveys methodology is widely applicable and provides a new way to investigate the wide range of phenomena assessed by Likert-style surveys. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Success in STEM-based fields provides a path to highly regarded and powerful positions in society. Hegemonic structures of society have excluded women and other non-hegemonic groups from these fields and from recognition in these fields. Between 1903 and 2018 the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded 113 times to 212 individuals. Marie Curie was awarded the prize in 1903; Marie Goeppert-Mayer in 1963; and Donna Strickland in 2018. Three women out of 212 award winners reflects continued exclusion of women from STEM-related fields. This study focuses on the language used in the newspaper announcements for these three Nobel Prize winners. Newspapers use specific language and linguistic strategies to maintain society's hegemonic values and goals. By winning the Nobel Prize for physics these three women challenged the hegemonic values of society that commonly exclude women from STEM-based fields. The newspaper announcements for these three Nobel Prize winners used language and strategies to resolve this challenge while describing these women and their achievements. This analysis provides an examination of the announcements to identify how language is used to portray these women to the general public. The announcements were analyzed to understand the use of linguistic strategies such as Topic Control, Hidden Power, and Interpretive Control, and the intended outcomes. The analysis revealed specific strategies used to portray each of these three women. The linguistic strategies shifted over time and each of these women were portrayed differently from their male counterparts and from each other. The announcements were consistent in portraying the male counterparts with admiration and respect for their accomplishments in physics. The 1903 newspaper announcements for Marie Curie's Nobel Prize for physics erased or minimized Marie Curie's achievements through linguistic silencing strategies. Subsequently, in 1911, when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry, the announcements were more respectful in acknowledging Curie's accomplishments. However, she was presented through traditional social constructs that applied to women. This included the use of compliments, euphemisms and evaluative comments that focused on her appearance and her social roles of wife, widow, mother, and her household duties rather than accomplishments. The 1963 newspaper announcements celebrated Maria Goeppert-Mayer's achievement of being awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. However, the announcements foregrounded Dr. Goeppert-Mayer's social roles of wife, mother, and employee. Dr. Goeppert-Mayer was often referred to as Mrs. Goeppert-Mayer rather than using her professional title. In contrast, the 2018 announcements for Donna Strickland presented her in a similar fashion as her male colleagues. She was applauded for her achievement and acknowledged as a leading contributor to the research for which the Nobel Prize was awarded. Strickland was not held to any social roles, identified by her marital or family status, or any other traditional social constructs. The announcements focused on her scientific achievements and her career. Each of the announcements for Dr. Strickland foregrounded, or at least acknowledged, the lack of women in the field of physics, but recognized and denounced the bias against women. Across all the Nobel Prize announcements the use of language was intentional and effective in portraying each of these prize winners. The linguistic strategies shifted over the timeframe of 115 years to finally achieve a more well-balanced presentation of a woman being awarded a Nobel Prize for physics. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]