Many education researchers have advocated grounding abstract mathematical and scientific concepts in students' lived experiences, environmental interactions, and perceptions. This dissertation explores the causal effects of various grounding strategies in instructional settings, specifically on the topic of statistical sampling. The first chapter is an integrative review that synthesizes literature from cognitive theory, laboratory-based psychological research, and design-based classroom studies to examine students' reasoning about statistical sampling with computer simulations. It organizes emerging themes within a grounded cognition framework to formulate hypotheses for empirical testing. The second and third chapters provide empirical testing of these hypotheses, developing experiments in which students engage in learning activities with interactive simulations. Through several iterations, both the research questions and the design of the simulations and activities were refined to investigate the strengths and limitations of perceptual grounding for learning sampling concepts. The fourth chapter investigates the personalization of context in students' interpretations of data visualizations. An online intervention with undergraduate students taking an introductory statistics course tested whether participating in a psychological experiment as subjects and then analyzing their own data influenced how students interpret data visualizations and engaged with the task. Overall, the results highlight the cognitive influences of perceptual grounding on concept learning and the motivational influences of contextual grounding on learning activities. [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.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]