China's first STEAM education textbook, "Design Thinking for Our Sponge Community", was published on Tuesday. Short for science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics, STEAM represents a paradigm shift away from the traditional education approach based on standardized test scores. Popular in the United States, STEAM is a contemporary approach to schooling that values teaching the learning process as well as facts and figures.

The new textbook is based on the idea of emerging students in the concept of learning, and connecting them with real world problems that they can try to solve. The approach used in the textbook encourages creativity and cooperative learning, which helps to foster the concept of life-long learning in students.

The new textbook was developed by Shanghai Education Publishing House in partnership with the De Tao Group. It will start being used by students at Huamu Zhongxin Primary School in Shanghai this coming semester.