Digital Inevitability: Families and the Transformation of Early Childhood Education

ABSTRACT This study investigates family attitudes toward the use of Digital Educational Resources (DER) in Early Childhood Education (ECE), examining how cognitive (knowledge), evaluative (value beliefs) and dispositional (expectations) factors shape both perceived usefulness and acceptance. Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behaviour and critical digital literacy frameworks, a structural equation model (CB‐SEM) was applied to responses from 2029 Spanish families with children aged 3–6. The model included three exogenous constructs—knowledge, evaluation and expectations—and two endogenous variables: perceived utility and agreement with DER use. Findings reveal that while knowledge positively influences perceived usefulness, it does not predict actual agreement. Moreover, perceived usefulness—central in traditional technology acceptance models—neither predicts nor mediates acceptance in this context. Expectations, in contrast, emerged as the strongest predictor of agreement, suggesting that socially driven, future‐oriented attitudes prevail over critical pedagogical reasoning. Evaluative beliefs, which included both perceived benefits and concerns, showed modest effects and reflected attitudinal ambivalence, particularly among highly educated families. Educational attainment moderated these relationships: families with higher education displayed greater internal consistency, stronger links between expectations and utility, and a more reflective stance; those with lower education levels relied more on practical evaluations and exhibited higher attitudinal variability. These findings highlight the need to move beyond access‐based understandings of the digital divide and to address inequalities in critical engagement with educational technologies. The results also call for more cautious, context‐sensitive approaches to DER integration in ECE, resisting deterministic assumptions about their pedagogical legitimacy or inevitable acceptance.