This qualitative interpretive study is based on the exploration of local literacies with four EFL University teachers interested in socially embedded pedagogies. It focuses on inviting teachers to establish curricular links with community resources to make decisions about their language literacy teaching. Through professional development workshops, the teachers were engaged in the construction of an alternative curriculum that considered literacy as a practice to be developed through the interaction with social and local structures. It also aimed at involving the teachers into a continual professional development, by encouraging them to explore their own views to language teaching. The research question that guided this study was how do EFL university teachers use local literacies as sources for curriculum and teaching ? Data were gathered from reflections about the mapping of the community, group discussions of theoretical concepts, curricular units, a community project, and two semi-structured interviews. The findings display that when teachers and students value the local context as a rich source of information, worthy of representation in the academic environment, learning communities can emerge in the classroom. Teachers managed to renovate a skill-based curriculum for one that was founded on local inquiry, including the linguistic and social needs of the learners, through a situated inquiry experience where students became involved as inquirers and problem solvers.