The psychology professor can suggest that a term paper on the function of dreams needs stronger theoretical backing. The sociology professor can advise the young analyst of the causes of child abuse to qualify her conclusions. Much of the distinction between the dualistic and multiplistic students and the relativistic students can be explained in Toulmin's terms. For example, dualists see the warrant made by the expert as unquestionable, while the multiplistic students think everyone has rights to make claims and warrants without backing. The relativist, by definition, is operating with a conscious conception of the justification and tentativeness embedded in the Toulmin Model.
Academic study requires that students operate at relativistic levels.
Various disciplines from physics to literary criticism constantly reshape themselves in ways that resist dualistic conceptions. In Toulmin's terms, when there are competing claims for ideas within a discipline or even for conceptions of the nature of disciplines, students should be able to generate rules for determining which claim has the greater warrant for their purposes. So the Toulmin Model lends a useful terminology for dealing with the relativistic expectations which can be applied across the range of coursework students encounter. The Perry Model offers college teachers a lens to clarify the diversity of backgrounds and dispositions that students bring to a topic. The model also suggests that many of the expectations for student understanding of sophisticated concepts and principles are beyond many students' levels of cognitive development.