For more than a decade the U.S. Office of Education and the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) have collaborated in preparing an annual summary of research in the teaching of science. The present bulletin, under the same collaboration, begins a new series in which each successive issue covers a 2-year period; its purpose, as before, is to make summaries of selected research available to school personnel and research workers. In collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the research in science education over the biennium July 1957 to July 1959, the National Association for Research in Science Teaching and the U.S. Office of Education sought to focus on some of the areas of science education in which known problems exist. The present bulletin summarizes published studies discovered through a careful search of the pamphlet and periodical literature of the biennium, and also unpublished studies discovered through a questionnaire jointly developed by the U.S. Office of Education and the NARST and mailed to more than 1,200 institutions officering graduate work in science education. It discusses the challenges to the improvement of science education, and the avenue to the improvement of research in the area. Sections on research studies in elementary school, secondary school, and college science each provide: (1) introduction; (2) analysis; (3) interpretation; (4) selected abstracts; and a list of the studies. Guidelines and recommendations for improvement conclude the document. (Contains 25 footnotes.) [Best copy available has been provided.]