Literacy policy and pedagogy in Aotearoa New Zealand have a strong discursive heritage of traditional literacies, which emphasise code breaking and meaning making with linguistic codes and conventions over other possible modes of communication. In a rapidly evolving landscape where changes in communication technologies give birth to new literacies that make use of all the codes available for design, this paper asserts teachers need support to increase and (re)conceptualise their literacy conceptions and pedagogy. It draws on five years of literacy research in Aotearoa New Zealand that supported 34 primary and secondary teachers to critically explore their literacy practices. Foucauldian informed discourse analysis of interview transcripts distinguished slight shifts in literacy practices, overshadowed by a spectre of accountability that hindered large-scale shift. This work points out the difficulty of supporting and sustaining change given the global landscape of policy discourses accentuating accountability.