Physics is known for its emphasis on innate brilliance as a prerequisite for disciplinary membership and success. Women, Black, Latine, and Indigenous individuals remain vastly underrepresented and marginalized in physics spaces, a reality that is due in part to oppressive stereotypes that position them as less inherently intelligent than their male, white, and Asian peers. Traditional lecture-based college physics courses often contribute to this marginalization by fostering competitive cultures that elevate inherent, exceptional ability over intellectual growth and malleability. In recent years, physics educators have implemented a variety of interactive instructional approaches to both enhance student learning and reduce competitive classroom cultures. This dissertation consists of three studies, each focused on discerning factors that influence the experiences, beliefs, perceptions, and intentions of undergraduate physics majors enrolled in courses that incorporate an interactive instructional approach. The first two studies utilized multilevel modeling to examine the contextual dynamics of students' physics ability beliefs, sense of belonging, disciplinary identification, and persistence intentions over time. The third study employed dynamic narrative inquiry to explore the lived experiences and disciplinary identity development of physics students with marginalized or multiple marginalized social identities in the context of the power dynamics of their physics learning environments. Quantitative analyses indicated that students' physics ability beliefs shifted and changed over time in accordance with both individual and environmental factors. In the short term, the malleability of students' physics ability beliefs related to the extent that they felt recognized by others as an exemplary physics student. Over a longer time period, students with more malleable physics ability beliefs conveyed a greater sense of belonging and intent to persist in the physics major. Students who perceived innate brilliance as required for success in physics, on the other hand, conveyed a lower sense of belonging and intent to persist. Perceived recognition and a sense of belonging in physics positively related to students' level of disciplinary identification. The magnitude of these quantitative trends varied in meaningful ways by students' gender, race, ethnicity, and course level. In addition, women, Black, and Latine students reported a lower sense of belonging in the physics major than men, white, and Asian students, even after accounting for individual-, environmental-, and disciplinary-level ability beliefs and perceived recognition. Qualitative analyses provided a richer context for these findings. Narratives revealed common course and programmatic norms, values, structures, and practices, some that disrupted and others that reproduced the discipline's white, masculine, heteronormative, able-bodied, middle- and upper-class traditions. Taken together, findings from these three students offer important scholarly and practical insight into how undergraduate physics programs can foster diversity, inclusion, equity, and justice in physics learning spaces by intentionally dismantling and reshaping oppressive dynamics that deter students with a diversity of social identities and backgrounds from growing, belonging, and persisting in the field as their authentic selves. [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.]