Towards an understanding of the phenomenon lay empowerment in congregational schools in the Philippines

The presence of the Catholic educational institutions owned and managed by the Religious Congregations in the Philippine educational milieu is a recognized reality today. In this kind of set up, the most number of work forces are coming from the laity even in the area of school management and leadership. The religious sisters, brothers, or fathers remained out numbered because of the demands of other apostolate of the Congregation. Despite this, it has been difficult to construct a systematic lay empowerment process in educational institutions due to insufficient empirical data available. In the literature, the concentration of lay empowerment is on the parish settings, not much in the academe. In this study, the religious and lay participants understanding and experiences of the process of empowerment were analysed through categorizing their responses and forming propositions in order to clearly comprehend the concept of empowerment as done in the Catholic school setting. Five major dimensions of lay empowerment were identified and explained that comprise the framework in understanding lay empowerment in educational institutions owned and managed by religious congregations. These are (a) nature of empowerment, (b) process of empowerment, (c) attributes of empowered lay leaders, (d) attributes of empowered organization, and (e) indicators of lay empowerment. The study revealed that these five areas are needed in the formulation of a framework in understanding lay empowerment in educational institutions. This framework can help the many existing Catholic Schools in the country owned and managed by vi religious who would like to institutionalize lay empowerment in their educative mission with lay as their partners