Undergraduate physics laboratory curriculum has undergone significant modification in recent decades in response to research and recommendations from educational and professional organizations and stakeholders. These reforms address multiple issues, such as 1) lack of student agency in experimentation, 2) an incomplete framework for student experimental activity that does not prepare students for future scientific research, and 3) limited opportunities for students to engage in rich and complex sensemaking practices. Pedagogically, this dissertation introduces a new pedagogical framework, the Introductory Physics Labs for Life Sciences (IPL[superscript 2]S), that accounts for each of these pedagogical issues by engaging students in autonomous, student-driven experiments to investigate physical properties of biological phenomena. The "IPL[superscript 2]S" course sequence integrates research-based best practices from the Physics Education Research (PER) and Introductory Physics for Life Sciences (IPLS) communities as well as the Three-Dimensional Learning (3DL) framework from K-12 science education. Empirically, this dissertation investigates how this pedagogical framework 1) enacts epistemological shifts in students' perceptions of experimental agency in laboratory courses, 2) engages students in authentic laboratory experimentation that meets current recommendations for experimentation, and 3) engages students in dynamic and autonomous sensemaking during experimentation. I present cumulative course-wide results and case study analyses showing 1) that students in this lab environment engage in experimental activity that closely aligns with recommendations for experimental best practices, 2) how students individually and collectively frame opportunities to enact experimental agency, how this framing is negotiated among peers, and how students' interactions with the pedagogical structure impact their framing, and 3) that students engage in multiple forms of sensemaking related to various components of their experimentation. Results show that students in this learning environment can engage in rich and dynamic experimental activity synonymous with recommendations, take advantage of opportunities to act agentically in physics laboratory contexts to conduct authentic experiments, and engage in rigorous sensemaking about complex scientific phenomena using multiple reasoning processes. Concurrently, these results push the boundaries of empirical research in physics laboratory contexts, providing new understanding of how students engage in authentic experimentation, navigate autonomous experimental environments, and make sense of complex scientific phenomena using empirical evidence. [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://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]