The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of two types of teacher stimulation on 1) learning motivation of students who were poor in mathematics and 2) the students' impression of the teachers. One type of teacher stimulation was the encouragement of students who were poor in mathematics to make more effort because they had good ability but their ability was not yet realized. The other type of teacher stimulation was the encouragement of the students to exert themselves because of their previous lack of effort. A questionnaire, including the scenario describing the two types of teacher stimulation and several questions about the students' motivation and impression of the teachers, was administered to 378 elementary school, junior high school, and college students. The former type of teacher stimulation was partially more effective in the motivation of students and also fully more effective in the students' impression of the teachers than the latter type of teacher stimulation.
