The vast proportion of Australia's Indigenous students are represented persistently as well below the national benchmarks for literacy and numeracy. Recent national school-based research and development projects, funded by the Australian Government's "Closing the Gap" strategy, have again targeted improving Indigenous students' literacy and numeracy performance. This paper reports on the "Principals as Literacy Leaders with Indigenous Communities" project or PALLIC (2011-2013). It targets new knowledge about what works for Indigenous students learning to read and involves research and development in 48 nominated schools with medium to high Indigenous student enrollments in Queensland, the Northern Territory and South Australia. The paper describes PALLIC's four professional development modules as well as research into three key questions accompanying the PALLIC project.