The purpose of the study was to investigate the change of students' conceptual structures about sedimentary rocks through the field trip. A semantic network analysis method was utilized to assess the change. An open-ended questionnaire was developed to assess high school students' knowledge of sedimentary rock including its definition, classification, formation process, and characteristics. Fifteen high school students participated in the field trip of this study. The text data were analyzed using the semantic network analysis method. Results are as follows. First, high school students' conceptual structures about sedimentary rocks were more expanded after the field trip. Second, students' conceptual structures formed a 'small world network' by combining the sub-clusters. Third, the size of students' conceptual structures was decreased after a few month of field trip. Nonetheless, the connection among the clusters remained the same.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how congruently the learning objectives of Earth ScienceⅠ textbooks match the 2009 revised Earth Science curriculum. For this purpose, we classified the learning objectives of curriculum and textbooks were into three factors including ability, cross-cutting concepts, and behavioral verbs. The text data were analyzed using the semantic network analysis method. The results are as follows. The learning objectives of textbooks with regard to ability factors mainly emphasized the cognitive and affective domain. In addition, the ability of inquiry performance was emphasized in the learning objective of the curriculum. The textbooks used various sub-frame of cross-cutting concepts in comparison with the curriculum. Both textbooks and curriculum used the term 'comprehension' the most as behavioral verbs. However, most behavioral verbs just remained at the level of cognitive system.

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The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between the communication status in group and the semantic network of science gifted students. Seven small groups, 5 members in each, participated in small group activities, in which they discussed the calculation of earth density. Both the communication status in group and the semantic network of science gifted students were analyzed using KrKwic, Ucinet 6.0 for Windows. As a result, the semantic network of prime movers in group represented more frequently used words, lesser rate of component, and higher density than that of out lookers. It means that the prime movers have coherent knowledge compared to out lookers, and they output more knowledge for problem solving than out lookers. Therefore, the results of this study may be applied to evaluating the cognitive level of science gifted students and group organization for small group activity.

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