Active literacy is the ability to inject one's own thoughts and intentions into messages received and sent, the ability to transform and to act upon aspects of the world via the written word. Five things are not working for literacy in Australia; formularistic exercise texts and kits, the media, experts with solutions, habits, and national testing. However, the Australian Orthodoxy, a position on literacy that stresses the role of the school as a rich language workshop, is working. In order to achieve the teacher power that works for literacy, teachers must change their frame of mind along with their practice, and the projects aimed at changing the teachers' minds must practice what is preached. Two such projects, the Language and Learning Project and the National Language Development Project, led to the following conclusions: (1) effective language development begins with the teacher's own learning theory, (2) tasks and goals must be negotiated, (3) teachers must come to feel their own power to act according to their theories, (4) assessments of literacy programs must look to the enactments of the teachers in living and teaching, and (5) the locus of control of any act of learning must be with the learner. (Summary observations on universal features of literacy, literacy programs, and teacher development projects are attached.) (JL)