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To prepare pre-service teachers to work with diverse student populations, many teacher educators have developed community-engaged projects. This study analyzes data collected from pre-service teachers in the U. S. South as they completed a community-engaged project, where they spent time learning about the community, created a virtual tour, and revised a lesson plan to align with the information gained. The project is offered as a mediational tool contributing to pre-service teachers' conceptions of community and teaching. Findings suggest that pre-service teachers need explicit instruction about how to analyze communities and opportunities to learn with community members during teacher education. • Community-engaged projects complicate understandings of community. • Community-engaged projects contribute to sociocultural understandings of learning. • Pre-service teachers need support managing ambiguities about communities and schools. • Community-engaged projects should represent an initiative to learn with communities. • Community-engaged projects aimed at partnership-building can challenge inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]